Leiderdorps WeekbladKing’s Commissioner Jaap Smit and Mayor Tjarda Struik
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Broadcasting West
NOS Nieuws•vandaag, 11:34
Tjarda Struik, also known as the ‘blindfluencer’, was installed as mayor of Leiderdorp last night. The almost completely blind Struik is known from TikTok, where she tells her 200,000 followers about her daily life.
The installation of the 37-year-old VVD member was different from other installations, reports Broadcasting West . Immediately after King’s Commissioner Jaap Smit had completed the formal procedure, the new mayor asked everyone in the council chamber to put on a blindfold. She wanted to let those present feel what it is like to go through life with virtually no vision.
“You may have noticed already, I’m going to speak a little softer. Because a lot of things just hit me a little louder,” Struik said. “You will no longer be distracted by what you see. But you will do one thing a little more: that is listening.”
Municipality of Leiderdorp Wearing a blindfold in the council chamber of Leiderdorp
In Leiderdorp, Struik plans to continue doing what she already did as a councilor in Zeist: drawing attention to accessibility and inclusivity. “As far as I am concerned, accessibility is broader than the physical environment. It is also about digital accessibility and the accessibility of our facilities,” she told the local channel earlier this year. Key City .
“When I was growing up, people around me often paid more attention to what I might not be able to do due to my disability than to what I could do,” Struik says on her website. “I hardly found any examples of professionals from the disability-community who I could identify with in the positions I wanted to fill one day.”
It was the reason for her to declare herself a ‘blindfluencer’. She posts videos on TikTok that always start with ‘Hi, I’m Tjarda and I’m almost blind’, after which she happily skis down a mountain or prepares something in the kitchen with her children. At the same time, she also entered politics to, as she says, “represent society”.
In June she told NOS how she feels about her new job:
Almost blind mayor has the entire room blindfolded: ‘This is my world’
King’s Commissioner Smit was pleased last night with the arrival of Struik as mayor. “If you can swim well, it doesn’t matter how deep the water is. I saw someone in Tjarda who can swim well.”
Liesbeth Spies, mayor of the neighboring municipality of Alphen aan den Rijn and chairman of the Dutch Society of Mayors, was immediately full of praise. “I haven’t met you yet, but I feel like I know you,” Spies said. “That is of course because of all those hilarious TikTok videos. Compliments to the confidential committee for seducing a celebrity to become mayor.”
Almost blind but mayor
Municipal councilor Hugo Langenberg of Local Party Leiderdorp is already looking forward to one of Struik’s first activities as mayor: the arrival of Sinterklaas. “Then it’s bursting with children who all know her from TikTok. And then she can say: ‘I’m almost blind, but I am beautiful mayor of Leiderdorp.'”
Struik is not the only virtually blind mayor in the Netherlands. At the end of last year, Marcel Oosterveer became mayor of Waalre. The first blind mayor in the Netherlands was Ad Bestman, from January 1981 to early 1988, in the then independent municipality of Abcoude.
2023-11-15 10:34:51
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